Amplify: James DeRosso

Today I am featuring Portland, Oregon ceramic artist James DeRosso as the latest in my Amplify Series. I don’t know James personally, but I am a big fan of his work.

About five years ago I was inspired by one of the fourth graders that I was teaching at the time who was drawing monsters, and I thought, “Hey, that looks like fun,” and before long I began drawing my own monsters. Since that time, monsters have become a vein of my work, so I definitely have an affinity to artists that create monsters. It was at this time that a friend just casually said that I should check out monster8all.com, and that’s when I first discovered James’ amazing work.

James’ love of ceramics began in junior high, and though he received his college degree in graphic design, he spent a lot of time during those college years in electives in the ceramic studio. After college he began working in advertising, but continued to pursue ceramics on the side. Eventually a commission for 200 custom ceramic vases forced him to quit his advertising job and focus on the commission full time. He never went back to advertising, and has been creating unique ceramic pieces ever since.

The monsters grew out of the small guardian creatures James would make to watch over the firing of the kiln while in college, but these small gargoyle-like figures kept disappearing from the top of the kiln. James then decided that perhaps there was something to these little characters and started to focus his energy into creating more realized versions.

James creates both stand alone sculptural pieces and functional pieces. His monsters aren’t scary or gory. They seem more grumpy or annoyed, but they have a fun and comical air to them with their large eyes, visible teeth, and expressive faces. This was something that really drew me in and inspired my monsters. With all of James’ monsters, he draws attention to the eyes and often glazes them with a bright red, a vivid blue, or an opaque white to make them contrast the body and really stand out.

Whether sculptural or functional, his pieces seem to fall into a couple of categories. He has purely ceramic pieces that come from the kiln finished, and he has mixed media pieces where he combines the fired monsters with rusty bits of metal, wheels, gears, and gauges giving them a slightly steampunk vibe. As for his functional pieces, James creates monster pots, lidded canisters, mugs, salt and pepper shakers, and much more.

Along with his ceramic monsters, James has also brought his aesthetic to two-dimensional work and has explored his monsters through illustration and painting.

Like many artists, James shares his work through galleries, festivals, and exhibitions, but he also brings the joy of monster making to kids and adults alike through the workshops and classes he teaches.

I hope that you enjoy James’ fun and unique monsters as much as I do, and please make certain to check out James online to see more of his amazing work.

Website: http://www.monster8all.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Monster8all/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monster8james/

Amplify: Jen McCleary

So far the artists that I have featured as part of my Amplify project have been good friends of mine, or at the very least Facebook friends. But I gain inspiration from many artists that I don’t know and never met. Today, I am expanding the project to include someone whom I have followed for quite some time online — someone whose work I have admired, but someone whom I’ve never met.

Today’s Amplify artist is Philadelphia-based artist Jen McCleary. Jen is a versatile artist and creates mixed media work, digital collages, jewelry, and wheel thrown pottery. I first came across Jen’s art on Instagram, most likely from looking at a variety of mixed media art and journal art. It was her art journals that first drew me in, and the time-lapse videos of her working in her journals inspired me to create my own time-lapse, Journal Friday videos. I love seeing her process. She works in a much different way in her journals than I do in mine, and it’s always interesting to see a fresh take on the process.

Art has always been an important part of Jen’s life, and by high school she knew she wanted to be an artist. She studied painting and printmaking at the Tyler School of Art of Temple University, and it was during this time that she discovered her love of mixed media and book art. After college, she ended up working in the field of academic publishing, but continued to pursue her art. After going back to school, she became a graphic designer for a local university, and eventually was able to go freelance, giving her more flexibility with her creating.

No matter the medium, Jen approaches her work in a very similar way. She works intuitively as she pieces together disparate images, patterns, and materials from her collection of ephemera and odds and ends, fitting it all together in a cohesive work. She invites play and discovery into her process, and allows the work to evolve as she works. The juxtaposition of images, shapes, and patterns creates work that is visceral and symbolic.

Of all of Jen’s work, I am most drawn to her mixed media pieces where she physically pulls together an array of fragments and pieces to create something that suggests narrative and story, but the ambiguous nature leaves that story or narrative up to the viewer to interpret and form.

Along with her more traditional, hands-on work, Jen creates digital collages with that same feel. Though she originally disliked digital art, the possibilities of Photoshop won her over and led her to change her mind.

Repurposing and reusing of objects, images, and materials is an important part of Jen’s process and is probably most evident in her jewelry work and her ceramic work. With her jewelry, she combines found and vintage objects with imagery and mixed media to create one of a kind wearable art. And in her ceramic work, she doesn’t simple create functional wheel pieces. She creates the pieces and then alters them through decoupage and kintsugi, the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken pots with gold and lacquer to create something different and unexpected.

Though Jen doesn’t deliberately set out to create a certain piece with a certain meaning, there are themes that run through her work. In her artist statement, Jen describes some of the dualities that she explores in her work and specifically mentions light/dark, man-made/natural, and complexity/simplicity. I would also say that her work explores deconstruction/reconstruction, universal/personal, and cosmic/earthly, as well as others.

I hope that you enjoy Jen’s work as much as I do, and of course, you can find out more about her and see much more of her work online.

Website: https://www.jenmccleary.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JenMcClearyArt/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenmcclearyart/

Amplify: Mark Harding

For today’s Amplify feature, I wanted to go in a slightly different direction and perhaps stretch the idea that most people have about what art is and what an artist does. I am pleased to share my friend Mark Harding, and his beautiful work. I don’t really remember when I met Mark. That’s the way it is when you move in and out of circles of friends, but it has to have been 5 or 6 six years ago. It could easily be much longer than that, but however long it has been, it has been fascinating to witness Mark’s journey.

You might call Mark a florist, but I think that word, though he uses it himself, doesn’t do Mark justice. The word florist to me conjures the image of someone putting together bouquets and vases of flowers mindlessly at the grocery store or at the local florists. Though the flowers may be beautiful and their arrangement pleasing, they lack the WOW factor. Mark is a true floral artist and creates stunning arrangements and impermanent works of art, and I think that difference is intention. Mark puts a lot of thought and intention into his all of his designs, from simple, everyday bouquets to his large installations at floral shows.

Mark wasn’t always a floral designer and spent many years as a circus artist and clown, but when he encountered flowers, he decided to give them the same dedication and intention that he had given to being a circus aerialist and performer. Just as movement and narrative was important to his circus performances, they are equally important to Mark’s floral work. Texture and contrast also play a key role in his designs as he plays shapes, lines, and patterns off of one another.

In 2016, Mark opened Flower Haus, his storefront in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Though its a small space, it is constantly filled with an array of flowers, arrangements, and plants, and Mark puts as much thought and intention into the the ever changing space as he does the beautiful work that fills it.

Along with running the shop and making and delivering bouquets and arrangements on a day-to-day basis, Mark continually pushes his design skills, and his remarkable designs and originality, keeps his schedule full with special events like weddings and floral shows. He always works hard to bring a unique narrative to any event, and his large and inventive installations have earned him and his team medals at the last three Philadelphia Flower Shows.

Mark’s work is rooted in community, and he works closely with his clients to give them something very special, but his sense of community stretches even further. He supports others in his community and works with local growers to ensure freshness and quality, as well as teaming up with Joy Birdy Pottery to sell unique vases and pots. Also, during this pandemic, he has found a way to combine his love of circus performing and floral design to bring a bit of color and beauty in a project that he calls Social Floristry. Mark describes the project as “the act and intention of connecting and engaging our local communities directly with the power, presence, and beauty of floristry, no matter the circumstance.” Working under the guise of Harden Stark, he has been delivering the beauty of flowers to essential workers as a way to uplift and connect all through the support and donations of people in the community.

Mark is a truly gifted floral designer, and if you’re ever in Shepherdstown, make certain to stop by the Flower Haus.

You can find out more about Mark and see much more of his work online.

Website: https://www.flowerhausguys.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flowerhausguys/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flowerhausguys/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/flowerhausguys/

Gratitude

We are living through an unprecedented time, and our worlds are just now starting to reawaken as many areas are taking their first steps into reopening in a COVID-19 world. Things are definitely not going to the be same, and we’re not simply going to pick up where we left off in March. People are struggling to make sense of it all. Our world has changed, and so much is still uncertain.

But in the midst of all of this craziness, confusion, and uncertainty, I have so much to be grateful for, and I have been filled with such gratitude for the support and generosity of everyone out there over the past couple of months.

Back in March, the world shut down, and I found all of my workshops, classes, and events cancelled or postponed. I went from having a busy spring scheduled to having no schedule at all, and as an independent contractor and a gig worker, I was hit with a flash of panic. But fortunately, I had enough in the bank to get by for a bit, and after that initial panic subsided, I turned to offering live streams online as a way to connect with folks and to give folks a creative outlet. I was struck by the number of people who tuned in and by all of the positive feedback.

As the pandemic wore on, I knew I needed to do something. The bank account began running low, and this situation was going to last for a couple of months at the least. So, I thought to offer an online workshop — just a simple workshop that would help me get out of my creative funk and that would be something new and different from what I’ve done before. I was just testing the waters with this workshop, and I was expecting just a handful of students. But, I got a lot more than I figured, and it just blew me away. I was filled with gratitude that a couple dozen folks wanted to make art with me through the computer. It gave me the confidence to offer a few more online classes. Again, I am flabbergasted by the response. I can’t wait to share with these folks and make art together.

I feel so fortunate that so many folks are turning out for these online experiences. The workshops are definitely helping me to earn a living during these difficult times, and again, I am filled with gratitude and appreciation for the generosity and support of everyone!

I’m not grateful just for those in my workshops. I am grateful for everyone who has supported me during this time — everyone who has liked, commented, and shared my social media posts — the artists who have allowed me to tell a bit of their story — the folks who showed support in the early days of the pandemic and tuned into the live streams — everyone that has watched one of my YouTube videos or tuned in for my Journal Friday time-lapses — anyone who has listened to my podcast and gotten some kind of inspiration from it — anyone who purchased artwork. I am grateful and humbled by the response and the support. You have all made this scary and uncertain time much less scary and uncertain.

Thank you to each and everyone of you. I am grateful from the bottom of my heart, and I appreciate all the love, support, enthusiasm, and generosity. This has be such a remarkable time — both in the way the pandemic has impacted our lives, but also how so many have come together to lift one another up and to support each other. It is with much love and gratitude that I write these words. I am indebted to your kindness!

Thank you!

Amplify: Ellen Zangla

As part of my Amplify series, today I am featuring friend and award winning photography Ellen Zangla. Ellen specializes in pet photography, and does an incredible job capturing the personality of each animal.

I don’t remember exactly when I met Ellen, but it was definitely through my wife Joanne. Both Ellen and Joanne are animal lovers and have done lots of work for a variety of animal rescue groups where we live in Virginia, and they move in many of the same circles.

Ellen lives in Hamilton, VA and has been pursuing photography for more than thirty years. In 2009 she decided to merge her love of animals and her love of photography, and began taking photos of pets and animals. Though she also did family photos and high school portraits, Ellen soon move to exclusively photographing pets, and sometimes pets with their people.

I may be a bit biased about Ellen’s work, since she has photographed many of our animals over the years, and I could fill up this feature with all photos of our crew. No matter whose pet she’s photographing, Ellen has a way of capturing animals, and anyone who has ever tried to take a photo of their own pet will know just how hard it is to get a decent photo of an animal. As I browsed through her photos, it was so difficult to just select a few. She has so many amazing photos.

Ellen typically takes photos outside, especially when working with dogs, and will often use her own backyard as the setting. But she is flexible and easily adapts to taking photos inside, especially for animals that can’t be outdoors. Ellen is a master and takes beautiful formal portraits of animals, but it’s the more candid ones that I like — the dog peeking over the fence, the action shot of the dog jumping, or the intimate moment between a kitten and her human mommy. These more informal images particularly pull me in.

Cats and dogs probably make up most of her pet photography, but Ellen never shirks from a challenge, and has photographed rabbits, guinea pigs, lizards, and even chickens.

Though she photographs mainly pets, Ellen has also turned her lens to capture some stunning views of wildlife and nature whether in her own backyard or out somewhere in the wilderness.

Probably more impressive than her skill with the camera and capturing images of animals, is Ellen’s generosity. Ellen has a huge heart, and dedicates a good bit of her time to helping animals in need, including the four legged family members that she has rescued and adopted over the years. Her generosity doesn’t stop there, and she has used her photography to raise tens of thousands of dollars over the years for a variety of local animal welfare and rescue groups. Teaming up with the likes of Leesburg Veterinary Hospital, Woofie’s, Happy Hound, and Dog Day Afternoon Ellen has done community photoshoots such as Santa Paws and Paws and Claus where pets and their people can have their photo taken with Santa. Her work has benefited the Leesburg Veterinary Hospital Pumpkin Fund, Friends of Homeless Animals, Lonely Hearts Animal Rescue, and many others.

Her biggest fundraising adventure most likely is her Tails of Loudoun County coffee table book. In 2018 Ellen began photographing more than 200 pets for the book as a way to raise money for two local animal welfare groups, Friends of Loudoun County Animal Services and Loudoun Community Cat Coalition. Along with the photos, Ellen has included stories of the animals. It’s a beautiful book. Published in November 2019, Tails of Loudoun County has raised nearly $30,000 to help local animals.

Ellen’s photographs are truly wonderful, and they are such a gift to pet lovers. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this little peek into Ellen’s work. To find out more about Ellen and to see so much more of her work, please check out her website and social media platforms.

Find Ellen online:
Website: https://ellenzanglaphotography.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenzanglaphotography/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenzangla/
Tails of Loudoun County Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TailsOfLoudounCounty/

Amplify: Shawn Grove

I’ve been really enjoying digging into the the lives and work of artists as I create my Amplify feature each week. I feel like I’m getting to know these artists on a much deeper level, even if they are already good friends of mine.

For this week’s Amplify, I am featuring potter Shawn Grove. I’ve known Shawn for more than twenty years, and Shawn and I first met when we taught art at the same elementary school when I first moved to Virginia. I’ve always loved Shawn’s pottery, and I’m glad to share it with you.

Shawn grew up near Philadelphia in Malvern, PA, and first connected with ceramics at Longwood University in Farmville, VA. Though he taught art in public schools full time, Shawn also found time to create his pottery, and when he moved to Lucketts, VA, he began creating his vision for his pottery studio and eventually built his own wood fired kiln. Shawn specializes in functional pieces for the home and garden, and he creates mugs, bowls, pitchers, bottles, planters, and much more.

The wood fire process is a very highly involved process since wood has to be constantly fed into the kiln during the firing, and it takes an entire weekend to bring the kiln up to the correct temperature. Shawn fires his kiln twice a year — once in the spring and once in the fall, and he spends the rest of the year throwing and creating his pots to make certain that he has enough pieces to fill the kiln.

Wood firing is a somewhat unpredictable process, and the placement of the pots within the kiln and the interaction of ash, salts, and minerals in the clay leads to unique, one-of-a-kind pieces. You won’t see bright colors in wood fired pottery, but you’ll see speckled browns, streaks of dark umbers, and splotches of reddish siennas — the colors of the earth. Often pieces come out in an unexpected ways, and if it’s something Shawn likes, he tries to figure out how it came to be so that he can set up those conditions again. With experience, the unpredictable becomes more predictable, but the process of wood firing still has plenty of surprises in store. This is what draws Shawn to this process over the more predictable firing of an electric or gas kiln.

Like so many artists, Shawn shares his pottery through exhibitions at galleries and other venues in the Northern Virginia area and at events like the annual Leesburg Flower and Garden Festival and the Western Loudoun Artist Studio Tour. He also sells his work from his studio gallery in Lucketts during annual sales events. Shawn also teaches wheel throwing classes at the Round Hill Arts Center in Round Hill, VA, and teaches a variety of classes as an art teacher at Woodgrove High School in Purcellville, VA.

Shawn’s pottery has a simplicity and an elegance of form, but a richness and a texture from the firing that combine in his wonderful pieces.

I hope that you enjoy Shawn’s work as much as I do.

Please check out Shawn’s website and social media to see more of his work!
Website: www.shawngrovepottery.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008181307996
Instagram: www.instagram.com/woodfiredpottery

Amplify: Crystal Neubauer

Today I want to feature Crystal Neubauer as this week’s Amplify artist. Unlike the other artists that I’ve featured so far, I haven’t personally met Crystal, but we’ve been friends on social media for a while, and since she is friends of Erin Keane and Amanda Jolley ( both artists I have featured here on the blog), I feel like Crystal and I have been in some of the same circles. Of course, I have been an admirer of her work for quite some time.

Crystal lives in Gurnee, Illinois, but has a studio not too far away at the 16th Street Studios in Racine, Wisconsin. Though she took art classes in high school and enjoyed them, she got away from art as an adult. When she found her way back to creating, Crystal was drawn to collage and though she dabbled in a few other mixed media areas, the possibilities of paper drew her in.

Collage has remained at the heart of her artmaking, and Crystal combines her love of old and discarded items with this paper art form. Old maps, documents, cardboard packaging, book covers, pamphlets, and other vintage papers and ephemera all find their way into her work as she tears and cuts them to create large and small abstract collages. The colors of her materials shine through creating the color scheme and the contrast in the work.

However, Crystal hasn’t confined her work to just paper and flat, two-dimensional work. She has also repurposed pieces of wood, found discs, large metal hoops, and other objects, often combining them with paper and collage to create three-dimensional assemblages like her recent shields series which explore the ways that people tend to shield and protect themselves.

Crystal also explores the use of encaustic wax with her work, often combining it with the collage materials and assemblages and giving her pieces a completely different tactile sensation. She has recently taken the use of wax to a new level and begun using the burning of beeswax candles as part of her process in pieces that have sacred and spiritual themes.

Like so many artists, Crystal shares her work with others exhibiting her work in her Racine studio, but she is also represented by Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona and Gallery IMA in Seattle, Washington. She teaches a wide variety of classes and workshops at her studio, as well as at venues through out the country, and now in the time of this pandemic, she is teaching an online workshop through Facebook. Along with these workshops, Crystal shares tips, techniques, and ideas in her book The Art of Expressive Collage.

I continually find inspiration in Crystal and her work, and I always get a sense of history, time, and memory from her pieces, and I also get the feeling that I am looking at work that is deeply personal and sacred. I hope to one day take a class with her, and I hope that you have enjoyed this little peek at Crystal’s world.

To learn more about Crystal and to see more of her work, make certain to check out her website and social media channels.

Website: www.crystalneubauer.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/crystalneubauerartist
Instagram: www.instagram.com/crystalmarieneubauer
Blog: www.otherpeoplesflowers.blogspot.com

Amplify: Brian Kirk

For this week’s Amplify artist, I want to feature good friend Brian Kirk.

I had the pleasure of working with Brian for 9 years when we were both art teachers at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Virginia, which means that I have come to know him as a close friend and as an incredible artist.

Brian grew up in the D.C. metro area and now calls Purcellville, VA home. He was always interested in art, and though he is mainly a sculptor working in stone and metal, being a public school art teacher for many years has given him the chance to dabble in everything from encaustic and ceramics to painting and glass casting.

Brian loves to be outside and finds inspiration for much of his work in nature, especially for his stone carving and copper sculptures, but it sneaks its way into his other work as well from floral and leaf motifs to shapes and forms reminiscent of shells and insects. Besides copper and stone carving, Brian works with welded steel, often combining cast off and found pieces of steel. But other times he purposefully bends rods of steel and creates specific shapes and forms to fashion his work.

Brian works in a variety if scales — everything from small, table top pieces and wall assemblages to large outdoor, steel sculptures and everything in between. No matter the size of the piece, he always considers the surface of his work giving his works a patinated or oxidized look or using bright colors of enamel paint for extra pop.

Brian once discovered the interesting effect of wet steel rusting on a cardboard box, and began to purposefully use rusting steel plates and scraps of steel to create one of a kind rust prints on heavy archival paper or Belgian linen . Though he may use the same plates and pieces over and over again, the unpredictable nature of the oxidation process always leads to one of a kind results. Often times, these prints stand alone as resolved works to be framed and hung on the wall, but with some, Brian has manipulates them in some way. Sometimes he has adds paint or indigo dye to them, and other times, he combines them with objects, metal scraps, and pieces of wood to create sculptural assemblages.

Along with making art, Brian has always shared his passion for creating by teaching others. He spent many years as an art teacher in Loudoun County Public Schools and is recently retired. He also taught several classes at the college level for Northern Virginia Community College, Shepherd University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and George Mason University, and he still teaches a Monday night metal sculpture class for the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.

Brian is always brimming with ideas. He’s passionate about so many different types of art, and he always has so many different things that he is exploring in his studio. It has been such a pleasure to work with him, learn from him, and just hang out with him.

I hope you enjoy Brian’s work as much as I do!

Find out more about Brian and his work online.
Website: www.briankirkstudios.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/brian.kirk.1840
Instagram: www.instagram.com/briankirk5707

Amplify: Amanda Jolley

This week’s featured artist is Kansas City artist Amanda Jolley.

I first met Amanda at Art Unraveled in Phoenix in 2015 when we both taught classes at the annual retreat. Our mutual friend and last week’s featured artist, Erin Keane insisted that we meet since she knew we were both going to be in the same place at the same time. Amanda and I would be Facebook friends for a few years after, but I was able to eventually travel to Kansas City and have a wonderful experience teaching at her home studio, aptly named Studio Joy.

Amanda wasn’t always an artist. She left a career as a corporate accountant in the 1990s and began exploring the world of mixed media art before settling into encaustic. She often creates bright abstract pieces from encaustic wax exploring how patterns found in everyday life connect to patterns of the brain and the subconscious.

Her experimentation of pattern has also led her to paper folding where she creates complex folded tessellations as well as origami forms. Sometimes these folded creations are unfolded them to reveal the the patterns of creases left in the paper. It was probably natural that the encaustic and the paper folding should come together at some point. Painted representations of origami forms and patterns often appear in her encaustic work, and she also embeds folded paper forms into the wax of other pieces to physical merge the paper with the wax.

Some of her recent work has been inspired by her family, and she has used her grandson’s drawings as the impetus for work, as well as incorporating actually wheat from her grandfather’s last wheat harvest.

Along with creating her work, Amanda has exhibited widely around the Kansas City area, but also nationally. She has also taught a wide variety of workshops throughout the country, though now that she has her own studio, she focuses on teaching there and bringing in several guest artists each year to teach workshops.

As if making her own work, exhibiting, teaching, and running a production company with her husband Scott wasn’t enough, Amanda has teamed up with fellow artist Sue Stover to create Two Artists Travel. With this venture, Amanda and Sue create travel adventures for small groups of creatives that will be memorable and inspirational to the individuals. So far they have traveled to Gujarat, India and Paris, France. Unfortunately, a trip this year to Bali had to be cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, but they’ll be traveling back to India in 2021.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing Amanda’s art and adventures over the past five years, and I hope to go back to Kansas City to teach in the near future. I hope that you enjoy Amanda’s work as much as I do!

Find Amanda online:
www.amandajolley.com
www.facebook.com/AmandaJolley.Artist
www.instagram.com/amandajolley
www.twoartiststravel.com

Materials Monday: Small Paper

I’ve already gone into depth about paper, but I wanted to specifically draw attention to using small paper as part of the artmaking process since I find it so useful. You could cut your own small papers from larger sheets, and that’s just what I do with mixed media paper in order to make 4x6 inch and 3x4 inch mini works of art, but there are two types of manufactured paper that I find rather indispensable.

First, I love the Strathmore pocket sketch pads, and I usually get the 400 series pad with recycled paper. This 3.5x5 inch spiral bound pad is something that I carry everywhere with me. The other is a pack of ordinary unlined index cards. They come in multiple sizes, but I normally get the 3x5 inch ones. Index cards aren’t as portable as the sketchpad since they’re not bound, so I typically have a stack of index cards in the studio.

Both the sketch pad and the index cards come in super handy and are very versatile for everything from jotting down quick notes to making quick drawings. Index cards are inexpensive and come in packs of 500, and are perfect for doing a series of quick drawings or sketches or some random doodles. I love to experiment with simple lines and shapes, and I can explore a variety of layouts and composition without worrying about wasting paper. The paper tends to be thin, and it’s definitely not archival, but they’re great to have around for working out ideas.

The small Strathmore sketch pad is perfect for carrying everywhere, and I always have one in my backpack. The paper is higher quality than the index cards, and it’s acid free. I like to use the pad for small drawings especially when I’m waiting at the airport, the doctor’s office, or at a restaurant. Like the index cards, it’s perfect for quick drawings, written notes, and random doodles, and I’ve gotten in the habit of making several little drawings in them nearly everyday since it’s so easy to pull it out along with a pen. The spiral binding makes it a bit more convenient than the index cards, especially for sharing. My friends and I are in the habit of passing our little sketch pads around anytime we get together, especially when we go out to eat or hang out socially. The drawings become collaborative and communal, and there’s never telling what will emerge from an evening of hanging out and drawing together.

But these drawings, doodles, lists, writings, and collaborative sketches, whether on index cards or from the sketch pad, are ideal for adding to the pages of a much larger journal, and I often incorporate several of them into a single page or spread. When I use them to initiate a page, it’s often difficult to tell that I used them with all of the layering that I do on top.

I highly recommend carrying around some small index cards or a small sketch pad simply for their convenience and artmaking potential.